On June 3, 1979, a rig drilling off Mexico on a prospect called Ixtoc experienced a severe blowout. Oil was soon washing up on south Texas beaches. Brown and Root, the offshore drilling and supply company, improvised a device they called the sombrero. It was a funnel, or hat-shaped device, which was lowered over the runaway well. The floating oil would enter at the bottom and be funneled up the device to the surface where it was pumped into a floating tanker. The idea was good but apparently the design was not quite right. It did not capture all the oil.
Having heard about BP’s seafloor collection system, which Upstream has dubbed Macondome I :), long-time friend and leading marine scientist Gene Shinn sent me this excerpt from his memoirs. Gene talks about Dr. Jerry Milgram’s research in the wake of the Ixtoc blowout. Check it out here. Gene’s comment about Dr. Milgram’s mad genius is spot-on. Dr. Milgram was also a designer of America’s Cup boats. Hopefully the Mocondome designers contacted Jerry for his wisdom.
At first Gerry seemed to be a stereotype of the absent-minded egghead professor from a prestigious university. I really wondered if any of this would work. Boy was I surprised! That man could handle a welding torch one minute and operate a sophisticated spectrometer the next. At the same time, he was making complex calculations in his head. I was greatly impressed.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 
The work noted by Dr. Shinn that was carried out by Dr. Milgram at MIT and Bug Sprong was funded by the MMS (then the USGS) R&D Program headed by John Gregory. I recall the trip to Buggs Spring and seeing the demonstration of the cone in a cone and how the performance of the system was improved. Did BP know of the MMS research reports for this technigue for collecting oil and some of the problems that it experience at Ixtoc (not the same type of system being proposed in the GOM but close)?
I think it is important to point out that a lot of the things being used in this clean-up effort were championed by the MMS Oil Spill Reserach Prgram, especially the ocean burn technology as well as the use of dispersants. One question – where is Ed Tennyson when he needed – Ha!
Good points Charles. I was wondering whether the BP team contacted Dr. Milgram. He would have been a great resource. Yes, the TAR program has contributed greatly to this spill response – in situ burn data, dispersant testing, boom and skimmer data from Ohmsett, remote sensing, and more. I’ve quoted Ed Tennyson several times on the blog (including the famous 1/4 inch lawn mower quote) but have been unable to draw him out. He would have been a great addition to the response team. They need a John Wayne type! Bud